I once invested a year
as Board President.
Indeed, I was often a bored resident
of our State Affordable Housing Coalition.
My platform,
to speak grandly
of what was more of a healthy whim,
was for safe and beautiful affordable housing
Habitat is not just an optional frosting
on the State’s health
and wellness
and prosperity cake,
A nurturing confection
to become multiculturally accessible,
co-responsively owned and managed,
and filled with resident ingredients
trained and experienced,
invested and engaged
in supporting each other’s cooperative needs
and hopes
and polycultural faith
in healthy outcomes
Presiding ingredients as essential as 7-grain flour
AND the warm slow-flowing
rich and savory
golden brown honey
of an organic
home-grown
carrot cake.
At the end of my first non-lustrous,
unfrosted year of the healthy carrot,
we were planning our annual conference,
to include our annual meeting,
the election of officers
from a slate nominated by the Board of Directors.
During the Board’s planning meeting,
We first heard from the Executive Director
about the conference theme,
which was to be
“Housing is the Answer”
[to all white male privileged executive financial questions].
Housing is the exclusive answer
to my bigger and better health and well-being cake.
I undiplomatically suggested
perhaps this is a monocultural answer
to a nutritional question
hardly any voters are asking,
Which was, I further supposed,
the reason we have an Affordable Housing Coalition,
to gather our failing corporate wagons
of besieged non-profit housing developers
and their corporate survival lobbyists,
who usually make about three
or four
or even more, times
what their median income residents
take in each year.
I thought, instead,
that affordable,
responsible,
and compassionate housing,
cooperative environments
and structures
and support systems,
are part of the liberating
and secure health care question,
issue,
potential resolution,
integral climate for Earth’s health care,
gardening
and farming,
and feeding,
and repurposing,
and recycling
resident future through past EarthTribe compassion.
Next
we discussed our slate of more mentally healthy officers
for next year.
In the past,
we assumed by hoary precedent
that Presidents
stay president
until their board term expired,
Then we tried to talk some other ambitious,
yet already over-committed, extrovert
to be our unanimously acclaimed
presumably fearless
and nearly flawless
leader,
Second in real world presence and power
only to the Executive Director
and, OK,
maybe third,
after the Financial Director.
Even so,
Board members present and accounted for,
sitting in our wisdom busyness circle,
seemed discouragingly relieved
when I began this agenda item
by announcing that we need to find a new President
because I was clearly not hearing
their politically correct questions
without questions of my own agenda.
I was happy to nominate
a young up and coming Latino leader
from my home town at the time
who was new to the Board.
After the Annual Conference and Meeting,
and his quasi-democratic elevation by affirmation,
Off to the north side
of the chandeliered ballroom,
holding less than sacred space
for mostly Ivy League graduates
without the good sense to dim the lights
and dance to The Beatles together,
maybe sing “Let It Be”
in multicultural harmony,
The new President confided
that he shares my taste
for the health care giving and receiving cake
and the 7-grain housing
and the golden brown honey
of resilient Earth cooperative residents
But, does not feel
it is safe
or liberating
to talk about that
as President resident.
I was his first clue;
probably not his last.
